Posted by Rebuild America
a resident of Los Altos
on Jun 20, 2012 at 10:54 am

1. In the middle of recession, materials are cheap, labor is cheap, companies will bid to do the jobs at a far more competitive price than in boom times.

2. Bad roads are costly - lost productivity to American businesses, wear and tear on trucks, buses, cars and people.

3. When the economy comes back, we'll need to do the delayed maintenance anyway, at a higher cost.

4. Repairing the infrastructure, to compete in the 21st century world economy, has to be done, or we are accepting that America cannot compete and is now a third world nations.

5. Borrowing costs are at record lows for our federal government.

6. Repairing infrastructure creates good jobs, which lead to jobs in other sectors and increased tax revenues.

Therefore, it's time for the feds to step in and invest in jobs, revenue creation and investing in America's future.

It's past a political argument at this point; with congress stalling on job creation for 3 1/2 years, they can now turn on the switch without any penalty - that is, giving Obama a better economy. As pointed out elsewhere, any investment now will no longer help Obama politically, the jobs created won't show up until after the election.

Posted by curmudgeon
a resident of Downtown North
on Jun 20, 2012 at 5:41 pm

Where's your civic pride, people? City Hall wants to build a anaerobic garbage digester factory by our bay. Right, we don't need it -- our garbage is taken care of very well already -- but there's something much bigger at stake here. This is our chance to be the first (and maybe only) city on the peninsula to have one of these.

The money for this coup to come from somewhere. Broken streets and care for needy dogs and cats can wait.

Posted by Robert
a resident of another community
on Apr 30, 2014 at 2:44 pm

So if most of the current homeowners are paying next to nothing in property taxes due to Prop 13, while at the same time, doing all they can to make sure as little new housing as possible is built, where do folks expect the money to come from?

Posted by Mr.Recycle
a resident of Duveneck/St. Francis
on Apr 30, 2014 at 3:07 pm

@Robert - California has the highest marginal income tax, the highest sales tax, and the highest gas tax in the country, so maybe some of that money should go to infrastructure instead of bloated public employee pensions.